In Holub's 'Dimension of the Present Moment',
the poet and scientist concludes: this instance,
the inhabited now, between our conception
of past and future, lasts - three seconds.
Approximately.
Assuming you're reading at a suitable pace
(for, we are in a serious poem, after all),
the beginning, 'In Holub's', is in your past,
and beyond your awareness lie the words:
'ever-present' and 'eternity'.
You object at once! We've just recalled
and pre-empted those very same words,
raising the first from the dead, and
the last from
impossibility.
What a fool Holub must have been, not to see
those three interminable seconds
were nothing more or less
than his, and our,
ever-present eternity.
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Written by Veronica_Milvus (769 comments posted) 28th April 2008 | woo. Heavy. And I've had half a bottle of chablis, just over 3 seconds ago. I think I might have to cogitate on this one overnight... wait - what? I've forgotten every word because I read it more than 3 seconds ago.
The things poets think about! Respect!
I'm afraid all I've got for intellectual stimulation is a crap sci-fi novel and the instruction book for my camera. But now my head is going round and round.
Can I read this again in more than 3 seconds time and see what it means then? | Fascinating
Written by patterjack (1435 comments posted) 28th April 2008 | I thoroughly enjoyed this -- both the speculative philosophy and the poetic expression . I have read a trifle of Miroslav's work in --of all places -- childrens' anthologies ! which is why I speak of him with familiar address.
Not an easy poet to understand , personally or poetically , and this work , as a commentary , does great job as an illumination, in reverse , of some of his ideas
Congratulations .
patterjack |
Written by Phil (7013 comments posted) 28th April 2008 | I too enjoyed the expression of the ideas and your treatment of them. Can claim no prior knowledge of references - but the delivery was more than sound enough to carry the ignorant.
Good stuff.
Phil |
Written by mia_ms_kim (1057 comments posted) 29th April 2008 | Fascinating. As with VM, I'm quite lost. However, the concept of time is intriguing to me. We now know (because of advance in physics, which I now confuse with philosophy, and I am already confused by both) that time is not an objective reality or a constant. Time seems to be an enigma. People talk of the eternal now, past and future and present intermingling together, timelessness - or the cessation of time and so on. I hope someone can explain all this to us, ordinary mortals. (Where did they pluck out 3 seconds?)
Mia  | Most Intriguing
Written by Katanga (1552 comments posted) 29th April 2008 | I thoroughly enjoyed this - a very different kind of poem.
Particularly impressed by your last stanza - folds it all up very neatly and paradoxically.
I remember a schoolboy discussion on the nature of Time, and a friend arguing that the moment of death must logically last for eternity, since we will never be in a position to look back on it and give it a temporal location, duration or limit.
I've been pondering that one on and off ever since - I must say, it somewhat gives me the willies.
Cheers! John | Thanks all
Written by NathanRoberts (277 comments posted) 29th April 2008 | A better reaction than I expected, which is nice...
Sad to say, this is the sort of thing that occupies my mind for large portions of my day.
Katanga: I think my reply to your schoolfriend would be: a moment cannot 'last for eternity' as eternity is not an infinite duration, but timeless (timelessness/ no-time as opposed to endless time...though we are lost in language). I would then ask him to define a 'moment' at which point he would punch me in the eye.
I think logical argument fails where time is involved, check out Zeno's paradox:
if reality is a continuum of infinitely small instants or a series of discrete moments (3 seconds, 0.3, 0.0000000000003, it doesn't matter) then logically nothing can actually move any distance at all, because it would mean negotiating an infinite series of these discrete frames...Achilles can never catch up with the tortoise, an arrow is motionless in every discrete moment of flight...
This problem has been refuted,apparently, but nobody has actually solved it, again apparently..I'm only quoting those sup[posedly in the know.
Mia: 'People talk of the eternal now, past and future and present intermingling together, timelessness.'
Part of the problem is that we think of time as a thing, moving along with us, somewhere in the background. we think of ourselves as distinct objects floating around in a map of space/time. Or ourselves moving along a fixed timeline, where the future lies ahead and the past behind. It's habitual thought perpetuated by our language use.
also, 'We think of ourselves'...who's the we?The old 'Who am I?' quest, which is said to lead to a direct realisation of the ever-present or eternal now (nirvana, cessation, etc.).
Past and future are concepts that can only be experienced 'as concepts' within the present.
I think Holub was probably talking about how people perceive the present: psychology rather than physics. The three seconds is approximate, because it changes with different people and different contexts.
Most of us have experienced time 'slow down', during an accident for example, which is a relative experience caused by brain chemistry, but then again all experience of time is relative... |
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